Evidence That Liverpool Do Not Miss Sadio Mané

Part One of Two

Given the overlap in themes (but different angles), this is the first of two articles to bookend this weekend. Another, by our tactical analyst Mizgan Masani, will follow on early next week, after this article by me.

(Publishing articles on Friday afternoons never seems good for traffic, but we’re about to head into the madness of 13 games by mid-November, and as well as the demands on the players, it leaves little time to write and publish proper considered articles. These two articles are based on long-term trends, not short-term reactions, so they will hold up, regardless of the result against Brighton.)

Mané Was Not Statistically Vital

Whenever you sell a player you will always miss them in some ways, as – after all – it’s one less player; especially if you cherry-pick the games where you randomly decide that they would have done well (i.e. the ones you fail to win).

This happened with Philippe Coutinho, until everyone realised that Liverpool were better without Philippe Coutinho.

(Or, at least, the £142m he raised bought Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker.)

Sadio Mané was clearly a quiet superstar for Liverpool, but he’s in his 30s now. So any projection of what he would provide is likely to be based on the Mané we remember, who arrived aged 24, and peaked in terms of goals aged 27; and whose brilliant explosiveness – especially off the mark – was unlikely to last too much longer, even if his other skills wouldn't diminish as quickly.

In this article, I will look at how, actually, he wasn’t as vital for Liverpool as some made out (in that, when he wasn’t playing during his time at the club – after that first season when he added a new spark – it didn’t make too much difference, in contrast to other big names), while Mizgan Masani will show next week how his replacement on the left wing, Luis Díaz, is statistically – on various on-field metrics – an upgrade.

The issue then becomes if Mané is missed as a squad option (and of course he will be, but it’s a luxury to keep adding and never selling players); and also, if he’s better than Darwin Núñez as a centre-forward.

Yet Núñez clearly offers far more future potential as a centre-forward, and we can all debate if some short-term pain of adjustment is to be experienced in an evolution of the team, for longer-term benefits.

Like his aerial ability, Núñez’s explosiveness has not yet been fully harnessed at Liverpool, but it’s there (and his underlying numbers have been exceptional, in a clearly flawed, tiny sample size).

A Quick Aside

As an aside, before getting onto Mané, Díaz and the players who seem to really make a difference to results, I’m fascinated by how Núñez’s height will offer new dimensions. We can’t say how well Núñez will do, but even though Mané was good in the air (like Diogo Jota), Núñez has far more potential in this regard, due to the basic fact of being taller. Unlike the other two, he can climb higher, to reach less-perfect crosses.

As such, Núñez’s goal against Canada (below) was worth a quick detour, given that, aside from being 6’2” (but not very good at heading the ball until a year or so ago), Núñez is now leaping in a way that will often get him above defenders who are 6’2”, let alone this Canadian who is 5’11”.

The whole notion that smaller players can leap high too is undone if a taller player also has a great leap. (And often players like Virgil van Dijk and Joël Matip win headers without even leaving the ground, such is their stature.) This was such an amazing leap, which has also been seen in a Liverpool shirt, but not yet in the box; and this led to a thumping, perfect headed goal.

Núñez has to work on his first touch (training with elite technicians at Liverpool will help), as well as needing time to develop wavelengths with the main suppliers, but the way he leaps – from working hard at the aerial side of his game in a short space of time – means that a defender has to be at least the same height and also get a good leap to stand a chance.

This delivery was from a certain Luis Suárez, but it’s nothing Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson cannot provide. Mané thrived on that delivery, but Núñez can be eclipse him in the air.

Mané Man

It’s also not as if Mané has blown the doors of at Bayern; after a good initial run, there are debates as to why he’s off form, in a Bayern team experiencing their worst league run in decades. You’d still expect him to thrive for a year or two, if it clicks (given the quality of player around him), but he could also be past his peak.

And as good as Mané was at Liverpool, he is one of several players now in their 30s, and the others – still at the club – are mostly (statistically) more important to the Reds.

As with Gini Wijnaldum, you cannot keep them all; and despite Wijnaldum leaving, and all the talk of him being missed early last season, the Reds were a couple of whiskers away from winning the greatest quadruple in football history.

(Meanwhile, Wijnaldum’s career tanked so badly he ended up playing for Jose Mourinho. Ouch.)

With Or Without You

Now, despite covering it in a Liverpool-focused football statistics book with Oliver Anderson as far back as 2006 (The Red Review), I’ve always felt that with/without stats can be misleading.

Equally, like a lot of stats, they can be revealing once certain caveats are included. They should be part of a suite of tools to which an analyst turns.

In his new book, former England cricket selector Ed Smith (who held the job from 2018 until 2021) refers to players ‘swarm harmonisers’ if they improve results when included; and referenced Liverpool in the process.

In a recent Times article, on the back of his new book Making Decisions, he stated:

“A swarm harmoniser is something or someone that improves the collective output of everything around it. The term derives, via biology and physics, from studying the co-ordinated movement of groups of animals. Liverpool FC’s first Premier League title in 2019–20 was partly based on the approach of their analysis department: they wanted to find players whose movement and understanding of space contributed to the whole team performance, over and above what could be captured in terms of individual metrics. Liverpool were looking for swarm harmonisers.”

Applying the old technique of looking at the impact players seem to have on results (with a minimum of 25 appearances), it showed me that Mané wasn’t actually that vital, and other players were.

There are those who, like the best Swiss watches, silently make Liverpool tick.

Indeed, there are some players who have been injured this season who have a greater impact on Liverpool’s results than Mané ever did; a couple of them obvious, a couple very surprising. I’ll look into these below for paying subscribers, before Mizgan’s piece early next week compares some advanced metrics for Mané and Díaz.